Welcome to my home page.

No, wait, I did that on the index page

Hi, my name is Eddie and I'm a science fiction fan.

No, that sounds more like a 12 step programme.

I was born and brought up in the North-East of England just north of Newcastle far too many years ago, and I now live in Berkshire in the South East of England. Somewhere along the way, about age 16, as a consequence of having the surname Cochrane, I acquired the nickname Eddie and it stuck, and now most people know me by that name. I had the usual Geordie childhood, going to school and supporting Newcastle United.

I went to University in Manchester to study Metallurgy and Materials Science. At University I realised that I enjoyed programming computers a lot more than I enjoyed torturing pieces of metal, and after a brief time spent programming and selling Apple II's for a small company in Newcastle (ooh, that dates me), I joined ICL, now Fujitsu Services, for whom I still work. After a number of years spent variously as a programmer, systems analyst, marketing intelligence analyst, support engineer, database designer and general dogsbody (not necessarily in that order), I ended up as a lead systems engineer, specialising most recently in systems management systems, where I support and build a variety of Windows NT, Windows 2000, and Solaris systems using Tivoli and an awful lot of shell scripts.

Back in 1989 I discovered Science Fiction Fandom. I had been a science fiction reader since I was 7 or 8, and a fan of Star Trek, Dr. Who, and Blakes 7 as a kid. My first SF convention was Contrivance in 1989, the first convention I was on the committee of was Protoplasm in 1992. I was on the committee of Helicon, the Eastercon and Eurocon in 1993, and Intersection, the 1995 Worldcon. I helped found, and am currently involved in running a series of Blake's 7/Babylon 5 conventions called Redemption, which tries to provide a lively and interactive fan-based programme, as an alternative to the rather more guest-oriented style of media con that has been more common in recent years. We've run 3 of these, in 1999, 2001, and 2003, the fourth will be in February 2005. As well as the cons, I'm a regular at the Reading SF Group and the London Circle SF meetings.

Let's see, what else. Well I've played a lot of role-playing games, done some archery, been to a few concerts and music festivals, in 1992 I was assimilated by the Internet collective, I've fallen head over heels in love a couple of times, enjoyed a lot of movies, drunk quite a wide variety of beers and the odd dram of whisky or two. That's about it.

Cheers, Eddie Cochrane

Same again please